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How to Get Sites to Backlink to You

I don’t know much about “backlinks” and decided to address the question about backlinks and share with the class what I found.

Definition: Backlinks are incoming links from another site to your site. They are major measurement for the ranking of a webpage. A page with many backlinks tends to rank higher on the major search engines such as Google and Bing.

Purpose: It is suggested that web pages with many backlinks are more authoritative than those with few backlinks, and therefore the search engines rank them higher in terms of quality. This translates into more traffic.

Here are a few ways to get good quality backlinks to our online business according to https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247984. I’ve developed my notes below from this article which is quite long but full of information and examples.

The broken-link building method

This method involves contacting a webmaster of a site similar to yours to report broken links on his/her website, and provide a recommendation with links to replace the broken link. Include your own website in your recommendation. (I’m not so sure about the ethics of this approach.)

Backlinks through infographics

Infographics are one of the most popular methods for bringing traffic to your website and gaining valuable backlinks. They’re also great because they’re easy to understand and share.

To create an infographic: Identify currently trending topics and see what people are looking for, then create your infographic using statistical data on the topic. (Example, Pew Research provides great statistics on social trends. http://www.pewresearch.org)

Guest blogging is one of the most effective way to reach new audiences. You will get your content in front of new readers and win more exposure when you publish on other popular websites. In addition to gaining the backlink, you will also increase your online reputation or your social media followers, and expand your audience.

It is recommended that, when publishing a guest article, always make sure you are linking to your social media profiles. If someone enjoys your post, he or she can easily follow you for similar future articles.

Check out your competitors.

Stay up to date with your main competitors’ online marketing strategies to learn from their link-building techniques, as well as their content-marketing methods.

Set yourself up for alerts when competitors are publishing new content on their websites.

Subscribe to their email newsletters or follow them on social media.

Create a Google alert for your competitor’s website. To alert you to any new content.

Following the example of others who have lucrative online businesses will help us promote our website more successfully.

Internal links are a key factor for running a successful blog. You can help your visitors navigate easily through your website and increase the overall user experience with a good internal linking structure.

Matt Cutts from Microsoft recommends that webmasters keep the number of internal links per page below 100, for both usability and SEO.

Promote your content.

Great content won’t get you backlinks unless it is promoted right. You have to get out in the world to promote your best articles. One best practice is shown in the following steps;

If they find your resource useful, they may link back to you in their next weekly roundup.

Bloggers are always looking for great content, so they want to hear from you. If they find your resource useful, they may link back to you in their next weekly roundup.

Write testimonials.

Write testimonials for websites you are using and you can earn a link from the homepage of an authoritative website. As long as you are a customer of that product, there’s a high possibility you can get a link in exchange for a testimonial.

One strategy is to create testimonials for the tools you are using and ask the product owner to display your testimonial on their website. Many reviewers do this on sites such as Amazon.

Contact journalists and important bloggers.

Spread the word about your business to journalists and influencers from your niche. It may be challenging to find e-mail addresses but we can also consider using Google Plus, Linkedin, or other social media sites. Your pitch should be short and to the point.

Donate.

Earn backlinks by donating to nonprofit organizations. Find websites in your niche that accept donations and link back to sites that have donated. Submit the amount of the donation you want to make and write your website URL.

Get interviewed.

Online interviews are common these days and an easy way to earn backlinks to your website. Become an authority in your niche and you’ll get lots of interview invitations (Example; www.thecreativepenn.com)